Management And Internal Organisation

Freedom and Democracy Party (ÖZDEP) v Turkey, 8 December 1999 [ECtHR]

Case no 23885/94

26. As to the merits of the objection, the Court accepts that ÖZDEP’s leaders resolved to dissolve their party in the hope of avoiding certain effects of a dissolution by the Constitutional Court, in their case a ban on their holding any similar office in any other political body (see section 95 of the Law on the regulation of political parties – paragraph 16 above). That explanation is supported by section 108 of the Law on the regulation of political parties which, by providing that voluntarily dissolved political parties continue to exist for the purposes of dissolution by the Constitutional Court, is intended to ensure that they are subject to all the effects of the latter form of dissolution (see paragraph 16 above). Thus the decision of ÖZDEP’s leaders to dissolve the party was not made freely, as the decisions of leaders and members of associations should be if they are to be recognised under Article 11.